Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’

Recently I had a dream experience that continues to haunt and fascinate me. I’ve been recording my dreams for nearly 40 years and never have had one with an angel in it, nor have I experienced the apparition of an angel though I am regularly aware of them and their guidance. This dream is utterly unique. Archangel Gabriel came to call.

In the dream I am in bed in my huge, spacious house (not a house I have lived in in waking life). My daughter Arlene comes in, somewhat annoyed that Archangel Gabriel has come to her and asked her to tell me that I am to go pick up my girdle as the angel wants to visit me. The girdle will tell her how to find me. Arlene had been busy doing other things in her room and had to get up to come deliver the message. She expresses an attitude like “Your people are bothering me, Mom.” They know they can get through to her. She’s a bit exasperated. It’s cute.

I go into the next room to look in a drawer for my girdle. Routing through it, I pick up a plug adapter and the room suddenly fills with the angel’s presence. A crystalline light is everywhere, with rainbows. My cells are filled with this power and energy, another dimension has come upon us. She stays for a short bit, and then she’s gone. No words, just presence. Shortly afterward an unnatural darkness fills the room and a threatening presence comes. I know it is a response to the light of the angel.

I don’t know why Gabriel came to me. It has been haunting me. I wait and hope to know more.

I did what we do these days – I googled her. Apparently one of her consistent missions is to inspire writers. Good God I do need a miracle there, I have been quite challenged in the last months with this. It is said she appeared to Muhammad and delivered the Koran to him with the news that he was to write it down. He was annoyed with her. One of the articles mentioned that she has had an annoying effect on some of those she visited, which tickled me since Arlene was annoyed by her in the dream. When I worked the dream in my dream group we focused on the girdle. What? A girdle? I haven’t worn one in decades though I did buy one before my daughter’s wedding thinking that the dress I had gotten would look nicer on me with that. It would have if I had remembered to wear it. I didn’t.

“Gird your loins,” one of the dreamers suggested. This is the idea that has stayed with me. Googling that phrase, I found that it means to prepare oneself for battle, for action, for difficulty, for hard work. In an earlier era when loose garments were commonly worn it was necessary to gather them up and tuck them in tight before battle or difficult labors.

Maybe my energy systems are loose and need tightening? What are these flowing garments that need girding? The loins are our generative organs. I feel pregnant with a book, am I guided to gird that area for safe delivery? What will that look like? How to respond… The dream said only to hold the girdle, not necessarily to do anything with it. Hold it until the angel finds me. I hadn’t even found it yet when she did come. I did find the one I never wore since the dream though. It is under my pillow now hoping she’ll know where I am. I wait.

I am worried about the world as I write. I’m worried about the horrors in Iraq, about the immigrant children coming into the U.S., about the refugee crisis in the Middle East, about GMO’s and the environment, and about many things troubling my heart that are much closer to home.

Are these worries the flowing energies to gird up? Gather them up, hold them close, and act.

Don’t know. Maybe it’s about none of these.

When angels come to us in dreams, what do we do? Ponderings are welcome.

A line from one of my favorite movies ever, Thunderheart, has stayed with me in the two decades since I first saw it. The film tells the story of an FBI agent played by Val Kilmer called to a Native American reservation to investigate a murder. Since this agent is partly Sioux in his bloodline, the government sends him hoping to soften the residents of the reservation toward him so they will cooperate with the investigation. He is, however, a hot shot with no interest in being identified as Sioux; to him they are primitive, foolish and out of touch with modernity. When he finds himself in the company of their most respected elder, a translator delivers the words of a vision the elder is having – the agent has great standing in this community as a warrior (and the movie goes on to describe why this is so) but, in his present awareness the elder says to him “You are as far from yourself as a hawk is from the moon.”

The story is epic to me. It describes perfectly, in my mind, our modern dilemma as humans. We simply have forgotten who we are. We are as far from ourselves as a hawk is from the moon.

How modernity has led us into this distant wilderness is a topic discussed thoughtfully by eco-theologians, eco-psycholgists, depth psychologists, and many social, anthropological and spiritual analysts. The simple fact remains that each of us, as individuals, have work to do to remember who we are. We have been forgotten. We are forgotten. We forgot. But we can, and must remember.

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This may be the most profound meditation a human can consider. The layers of this question will quickly take one past narcissistic and individualistic ideations into a deeper story of identity.

I write about this now because for some reason I keep witnessing the question surfacing in my mind and in the minds of friends, clients and colleagues. I wonder if this might be a result of the shift suggested in the calendar that moved us through 2012 and into a next phase of earth’s evolution. Old answers and old assumptions about who we are – individually, collectively and planetarily – don’t seem to hold power in the same way. People are casting about, bravely, with this question.

To me, in my way of seeing and describing, I would say we have lost the dreaming. Our forebears dreamed, remembered their dreams, discussed, revered and were guided by their dreams. Dreaming is, and was, a dimension of consciousness, a locus of operation in both day and night. To forget this is to lose ourselves and the terrain of the imaginal, a real realm in which our subtle bodies work out situations in the worlds we inhabit.

We are now, collectively, as far from ourselves as a hawk is from the moon. But remembrance is possible and seems to be beckoning. An open doorway stands straight ahead. Crossing its threshold requires willingness, imagination, humility and sense of adventure. But I see it, we’ve got it, we can do this. We can shorten the gap between hawk and moon. I know it. I’m looking forward to it.